in reply to Introduction to databases in perl?

I've only used DBI, and found it quite comprehensive.

I think that the book should still be fairly current, as there have been no API changes to DBI, so all concepts introduced in the book should still be valid.

For a convenient database that needs no setup, I recommend installing DBD::SQLite, which came after that book was published. It is a self-contained database, so you don't need an additional server or any setup.